In our Journalism class we have been following multiple news sources (WAVE, WHAS, WLKY, WDRB, and The Courier-Journal) for over four weeks to see how many/what kind of stories they produce on a daily basis.
Most of these sources met at least some of the Nine Principles of Journalism and Seven Yardsticks of Journalism, but the number of stories that had little or no local relevance was a lot higher than it should have been.
One of the contributing factors to that lack of local relevance was the influx of Ebola stories in the news. With every day of news analysis, it was rare to not find at least one story that involved the new, deadly disease.
In the month of October alone (only on the days that we studied these news sources), the number of headlines and online headlines (not including additional stories) that involved Ebola was ten.The number of additional stories from the news sources about Ebola was also abundant; on October 16th, 2014 The Courier-Journal (a local, Louisville newspaper) had a total of nine health stories, all of which were on a national or international level! This was the highest number of health stories out of all the news sources and out of all the days that were spent studying them.
In fact, the number of Ebola stories every day is almost outrageous and completely unnecessary; after all, exactly how many people have been infected, let alone died in the United States from Ebola? According to the CDC, there have only been four cases of Ebola in the United States, with only one case resulting in death. With these known statistics, the number of stories that are being produced about Ebola doesn't match up with the real level of worry United States citizens should be feeling. One can even assume that these news sources are beefing up the threat of Ebola and using that as a way to produce easy and lazy stories, because by doing so they can make the readers believe there is an immediate threat, which ultimately gives these stories a lot of viewers because people always want to read about something that can potentially hurt, threaten, or affect them in any way. This also leads to more production of these unnecessary Ebola stories, because as long as the number of viewers remains consistent, the news sources will continue to make them. In reality, at this given time, there really isn't an immediate threat, especially not to the areas in which these specific local news stations cover, and therefore they are not meeting the journalistic yardstick of local relevance and making the whole ordeal on Ebola seem more serious than it actually is.
Link to Courier-Journal Ebola Headline Story on 10-10-14
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